Trump attacked Vanity Fair because they gave his restaurant a bad review: https://t.co/ws6lET7wke
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 15, 2016
Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016
Of course, there’s a backstory: Graydon Carter, then at Spy, was responsible for labelling Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian“. From the review:
… The allure of Trump’s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. The inconsistent menus—literally, my menu was missing dishes that I found on my dining partners’—were chock-full of steakhouse classics doused with unnecessarily high-end ingredients. The dumplings, for instance, come with soy sauce topped with truffle oil, and the crostini is served with both hummus and ricotta, two exotic ingredients that should still never be combined. The menu itself would like to impress diners with how important it is, randomly capitalizing fancy words like “Prosciutto” and “Julienned” (and, strangely, ”House Salad”).
Our waiter, coiffed and charming, was determined to gaslight us into thinking we were having a good time. “Trump gets the taco bowl and the lasagna and baked ziti,” he said, before subsequently informing the table that we could not order the lasagna or baked ziti. I asked the waiter what Trump’s children eat. He didn’t seem to understand the question, or, like Marco Rubio, appeared unable to depart from his prescribed talking points.“Oh, I’ve shaken hands with him before, and they’re pretty normal-sized hands,” he responded.
Our table nevertheless ordered the Ivanka’s Salad, a chopped approximation of a Greek salad, smothered in melting goat cheese and dressing and missing the promised olives, that seemed unlikely to appetize a SoulCycle-obsessed, smoothie-guzzling heiress. (Instead, it looked like a salad made by someone who believes that rich women only eat vegetables.) But the cuboid plant matter ended up being the perfect place to hide several uneaten Szechuan dumplings.
Our waiter eventually noted that Don Jr. gets the filet mignon cooked medium-rare, with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. The steak came out overcooked and mealy, with an ugly strain of pure fat running through it, crying out for A.1. sauce (it was missing the promised demi-glace, too). The plate must have tilted during its journey from the kitchen to the table, as the steak slumped to the side over the potatoes like a dead body inside a T-boned minivan. Don Jr. probably does not eat the filet mignon here regularly, either. Come to think of it, judging by its non-cylindrical shape, it might not have even been a filet at all…
Perhaps Trump’s veneer of a steakhouse is too obviously a veneer, meant for the hoodied masses to visit once and never return. (There are already an infinite number of articles about how Trump’s mass-produced products are meant to impress a hollow sense of wealth.) And prior to his victory, it seemed as if the world of Fifth Avenue power brokers agreed: the lobby was perpetually empty, the Grill(e) mostly frequented with Trump Tower residents and locals looking for a convenient power lunch, if any of the bigger, better power-lunch spots nearby were full. But later, when I read previous reviews of the Trump Grill before he became a presidential front-runner, I was shocked to discover that the food back then was bland, mediocre, and as Eater’s Robert Sietsema once wrote, “for timid people with digestive problems.” In other words, it was a culinary marvel lightyears beyond the rich-man slop we ate at the Trump Grill weeks after the election. (And indeed, it was slop: as soon as I got home, I brushed my teeth twice and curled up in bed until the nausea passed.)…
YES TRUMPLODYTES THOSE ARE OBVIOUS CHEAP SHOTS WITH AN AGENDA!!! Much like your Asterisk-Elect. And I may have to buy a subscription to Vanity Fair now…
"The magazine Trump doesn't want you to read. Subscribe now!" pic.twitter.com/LwOHevDyWn
— David Uberti (@DavidUberti) December 15, 2016
rikyrah
Larry O is talking about this right now.
Mnemosyne
I would be wary of eating there because you know the cooks are getting paid bupkis, so any soup or sauce is probably 90 percent spittle.
Elizabelle
Fellow healthcare enrollment procrastinators: you can call healthcare.gov and leave your number, and they will call you back tomorrow AND save your place in line. As in, you can still enroll for 2017 coverage. (Not sure it’s January 1st, but I will take it.)
Ended up with a computer snafu; very relieved to have a second whack at the apple.
Phone number is 1 800 318 2596.
rikyrah
CBS Poll:
If Ferret Head passes off the businesses to his kids, will that eliminate the conflict of interest?
Yes-26%
No-70%
There it is again: the crazification factor of 27%
Elizabelle
WRT Vanity Fair: OK, so we are eating Kellogg’s cereals (cuz they refused to advertise with Breitbart; yea!) and now looking at subscribing to Vanity Fair.
Who said PEW-otus is not a job creator?
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
It’s so tacky in there. There is a giant water feature wall which means it smells of chlorine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve lived most of my almost half century about a thousand miles from any coast, unless the Great Lakes count, and I don’t consider hummus or ricotta “exotic”. Other than that, I chuckled at the review, even if the best line was from Fran Leibowitz.
NotMax
Obama’s (very early) Hannukah address. Snippet:
Kristine
Since it’s Open Thread…
It’s been mentioned elsewhere that the publisher of the National Enquirer is a good friend of T***p. For most of the year, almost every time I went grocery shopping, I saw HRC on the cover of the latest issue along with some damning headline or other. Today, a man stocked the new issue when I was in line, and I was treated to headlines lauding T***p for kicking China’s butt, saving jobs, the usual. I know the magazine is junk, but, well, my folks used to read it. And even if someone didn’t, they’d still have been exposed to those headlines week in and week out.
Nothing else to add. Just an observation.
Mnemosyne
I may have a response in the trash? It vanished into the ether for no apparent reason.
Miss Bianca
I loved this review. It actually made me giggle out loud during a moderately stressful day at work, and that’s saying something!
Yarrow
This restaurant review, the thin-skinned tweet reply, and the change on the Vanity Fair website has just made my day. I bet that restaurant really is terrible. Who would choose to eat there? I mean you have to know it would be terrible.
BillinGlendaleCA
Over 1/4 inch of rain so far, woo whooo!
Botsplainer
I’m going to rely on the PRC to restore order to the world.
I’m given to understand the the Israel ambassador choice is a raging dickbag, and settlements will exponentiate without US restraint on Israeli apartheid or expansion.
Sadly, the PRC is unlikely to rid us of Trump before a great deal of bloodshed plays out. Look for the destruction of Washington, some kind of impoverished rump heartland union in the Rust Belt and Ohio Valley, and multipower occupations of such coastal cities as survive the war, like Shanghai in the 30s.
Jeffro
@Kristine: Yeah they had something about Trump’s team exposing dozens, no hundreds, of Muslim sleeper agents in the CIA or something.
It’d almost be worth it to spring for creating a liberal counterpart to National Enquirer and have at it. Completely make shit up about Republicans (as if they aren’t bad enough already), just to see how they like it (insert your own hyperbolic headlines here) but a) we get bored by stupid stuff easily and b) we manage our money well enough to know not to spring for checkout tabloids.
(I mean, re: B, we do know well enough, right?)
NotMax
Peter Luger, it ain’t. Keen’s, it ain’t. Smith & Wollensky, it ain’t. Closer to Tad’s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: I once tried Zima just to see how bad it actually was.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
I bought a sporty new bag from Tom Bihn in Seattle (made in Washington state AND they’re Democrats) and my 2017 wall calendar is by Mary Engelbreit, who pissed off a lot of fans when she got woke by Michael Brown’s death.
My 2017 resolution is to spend my money in blue states as much as humanly possible. If red states don’t want my filthy liberal money, then why should I give it to them?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: Well, he was using it to point out that Trump may have been using it to distract from his refusal to talk about the mass of conflict of interests that his presidency already is, and then brought David Cay Johnston and (?) Ron Klain (?) to talk about that. Now he’s got NY AG Sneiderman on to talk about Trump, and the broader trend of state AGs being ready and willing to take on Trump.
We hear a lot about the Dems’ shallow bench (too early to panic, IMO). This may be be where a lot of people will make themselves known. I’m sure Schneiderman has contemplated the sound of Hail to the Chief when he walks into a room. Xavier Beccera may be glad his name wasn’t on yard signs with Clinton.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Me too. A friend of mine got some. I had a couple of sips and decided it wasn’t worth it. I was thinking I hadn’t heard of it for awhile so googled it to see if it was around anymore. From the Wikipedia page for it:
It was a Russian sleeper agent drink!
Botsplainer
@NotMax:
Texas Roadhouse, with gilt.
It’s like Dudley Dursley ran against Hermione Grainger for the position of headmaster of Hogwarts, and Slytherin pulled strings to see to it that he won.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
“Second, there are, like, thirty Ray’s Pizzas. They all claim to be the original. But the real one’s on 11th.”
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Yep, right into the trash. I just freed it. You may want to hose it off though!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
People who find that Guy Fieri’s House of Ranch Dressing is full? The Palin family?
The saddest part of review, other than the dumplings, was that people are using the lobby of the trump pile as a place to propose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow:
Oddly, my conclusion was that it made a good mixer for vodka.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Weird. I still don’t see any forbidden words, but I must have accidentally referenced a troll nym. Thanks!
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, I saw that and thought the same thing. Sad! They’re going to look back on their proposals and wonder what they were thinking.
Adam L Silverman
@Botsplainer: Now you’ve offended Texas Roadhouse. Its a chain, but its not terrible and when I’m on TDY at bases in the middle of nowhere I know I can get a decent, if not outstanding, meal there.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: With WP who knows.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Do not question the mystical vagaries of FYWP lest they multiply like the brooms in Fantasia.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Is that the chain steak place that encourages tossing peanut shells on the floor?
Kristine
@Jeffro: I did not buy it. My dog’s already housebroken.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Nope, that’s Cody’s Roadhouse, which also does a good, though not an excellent, steak. They’re not going to be confused with Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris or Bern’s in Tampa or Peter Lugers or the Tavern on Rush and the Chicago Chophouse in Chicago, but they’re decent.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
I understand the impulse, but, frankly, it would just make things worse. People already think that the media is all lies and there is no truth, so we shouldn’t play into that.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m having to deal with an in-law who shows every sign of being a classic narcissist (as in, probably has a clinical personality disorder). I have decided that the only way to deal with this person is to be transparent about my plans (I’m trying to get her to let me take my nieces to Disneyworld). There is NO WAY I’m going to be able to beat a narcissist at lying or manipulation, so I’m going to be transparent and consistent instead. If she decides not to cooperate, that’s not my problem.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: thinking along the same lines. Good job.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Good to know – I’ll make sure to avoid that one. Also, given that the steaks are kept in a refrigerated case on the way in, I’m not sure how they’d come out frozen.
What you’re describing is just a badly run restaurant – from kitchen to floor.
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Trump Tower restaurant and Fieri’s Times Square restaurant are both tourist places, and therefore essentially review-proof.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Out here in LA, the place to go is Mastro’s. I have not yet taken out the second mortgage necessary to have dinner there, though I hear they will also accept an arm and a leg.
Shana
It’s a pretty amusing restaurant review but nothing can touch the NY Times’ review of Guy Fierri’s restaurant.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
Subscribe! It’s a fun magazine! And occasionally they have a great investigative story.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@randy khan: and now, I wonder how many Heartlanders who never would’ve set foot in NYC will want to go now on that chance they’ll see “Mr Trump” in his tower, and they’ll stop in for a Trump-burger
Mike in NCk
This. Fucking. Asshole. Cannot. Die. Soon. Enough.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: So basically bring your own cut of meat?
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
The Peanut Bar, Reading, PA, shells tossed on the floor since just after Prohibition.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: Good strategy. Total transparency and not buying into her issues.
HeleninEire
Hi Everyone. posting this again so you know who I am. HeleninEire was just plain old Helen. I’m here in Ireland. Loving it. But…going to sleep soon. It’s 4am here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Mmmmm…. Long pig.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: And the original shells are still there. Those guys never sweep up!//
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
You said it, not me. ?
randy khan
@Shana:
That’s a classic, although still not as good as the Ruth Reichl review of Le Cirque. (Not as funny, but more cutting in its own way.)
trollhattan
Anybody who voluntarily eats at a Trump-branded restaurant is entering into an agreement wherein he/she acknowledges the inevitability of receiving a mediocre poorly conceived meal for too much money in return for him pretending to respect the diner’s patronage and a promise to kick in a bit of Trump magic and enhance their heretofore pedestrian existence. Norovirus–on the house.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I always thought a theme restaurant based on the Donner Party would be a big hit.
“Hi, welcome to the Donner Family Style Buffet. Party of 12 your table for 9 is ready!”
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
I spent some time on the Healthcare.gov site tonight, and it wasn’t too bad. There was a bit of a wait to get logged in, but after that it was okay. I am moving to Medicare next month, but I kept getting a series of increasingly hysterical e-mails about renewing my ACA coverage before the deadline. I ignored them until I noticed that one said I would be automatically “renewed” in my current policy if I didn’t explicitly do something.
So I got on the site to try to cancel my ACA policy, and I got into a spiral where it said that I had to complete my 2017 application before I could delete it, but then every time I deleted it—and was told that it was successfully deleted—it still showed up as “submitted.” So I called the number and left a message for someone to call me back. Serenity now. But the “normal” operation of the site seemed to be working well.
And I’ll call Kaiser Permanente tomorrow to make sure that the transition from their ACA plan that I have now to their Medicare plan will be as smooth as they alleged it would be when I talked to them last month. I still haven’t received my official Medicare card yet, but I hope that won’t be a problem.
Everything will be so much easier when the Republicans get rid of all this pesky red tape and government bureaucracy.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Last time was there was when lived in the boonies outside of Reading for a bit during the late 70s. Fun place, good food. Apparently still decent prices.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Or an Alive themed Churrascaria restaurant (Brazil/Uruguay… Whatever….).
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Never been. Never had a reason to actually stop in Reading.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s just evil. Also, too soon!
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
The necessary variation in place of a lobster tank for the “pick your own entree” when one enters would be a tad disconcerting.
Botsplainer
@Adam L Silverman:
There was an old time steakhouse here in Louisville that people loved. Great location, great wood walls. Thing is, everybody upped their game and this place didn’t, but they thought they could keep their pricing consistent with the upscale boys.
Last time we went in (hadn’t been to it in 20 years), they had captains chairs from the 70s still, plastic packets of crackers on the table, mediocre drinks, iceberg lettuce salads and an honest to God slab of steak with uneven char and a big streak of gristle. Meanwhile, the check STILL looked like one of the better shops.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Pretty scenery, but truly the only reason to go the Reading is to hit the multitudinous factory outlets.
Was really one place whose lighted sign out front read “Tropical Fish Factory Outlet.”
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Look Jimmy, there’s grandma with the other dry aged steaks…
Adam L Silverman
@Botsplainer: None of that is good. Nor is it appetizing.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: I love Kaiser. Moved out of their coverage area, alas. Good to hear you will be set.
All day and yesterday on my laptop and tablet: healthcare.gov ad that in the time I could watch a cat video, I could sign up for coverage. I appreciate the targeting.
HeleninEire
@Omnes Omnibus: Are you still here? Jeebus Christmas. Go home.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Yep, and since the outlet stores in Gettysburg were much closer to me, not that I ever shopped at them, it made no sense to stop at the ones in Reading.
Matt McIrvin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My town has a hummus factory (Cedar’s)! So I now think of hummus as hometown food. One of their competitors had a tainted-hummus incident recently and I felt compelled to talk up the local industry.
chopper
just imagine, someday after trump is gone, and they build a memorial to the guy. think about all the presidential memorials on the national mall and the famous, well-crafted quotes adorning the marble up around the statue.
now imagine trump’s. walls covered in shitty tweets and maybe a statue of a guy grabbing a woman’s ass.
Botsplainer
@trollhattan:
There’s undoubtedly a click through extension on Open Table that is a Trump NDA, prohibiting negative commentary on any social media app, review site, yelp or the like, with a 10 million dollar liquidated damage clause. His screaming asshole stereotype lawyers would insist…
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer:
Fer reelz?
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Ah, but Reading boasts a pagoda. With a chimney.
Back before feet got to be what they are now (13), wore an 11½ shoe, a size no regular shoe store stocked (or if they did, in one ugly style only). Went to a shoe outlet in Reading and there, mirabile dictu, were several aisles of size 11½ footwear of all types.
khead
This is the way to get to Trump. Troll him.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer: The Hilltop Steakhouse in Saugus was like that. It was a local institution, but the last time we went there, we realized we were having the 1975 nice restaurant experience, and time had marched on. It’s gone now…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course he did.
Mnemosyne
The most annoying thing about dealing with a digestive reaction to FODMAPs is knowing that you did it to yourself with bad eating. Ugh.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Just how big are these rallies anyway? I thought I read that the first one was rather sparsely attended. Haven’t paid much attention to them since.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yarrow: I have a photo.
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: Har har.
EBT
This is absolutely what a legislative coup looks like https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/809539971304607748?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: OT: you seen this?
http://io9.gizmodo.com/hollywood-has-been-sitting-on-a-lin-manuel-miranda-anim-1790105319
EJ
Did someone say Streisand effect? I mean, I rarely read Vanity Fair but I had to seek this article out once I saw they’d upset Trump. And it doesn’t disappoint – the highlight for me anyway was the description of the infamous taco bowl: “The fried shell, meant for one, contained a party-sized amount of lettuce and ground beef suspended in sour cream and “Dago’s famous guacamole”, which NASA might have served in a tube labeled “TACO FILLING” in the early days of the space program. ” That’s just delightfully vicious.
SWMBO
@Adam L Silverman: @Omnes Omnibus: You are both sick bastards. I like that. Carry on.
Petorado
@Adam L Silverman:
It may not be the Donner Party, but Colorado has had more than a few eateries named after its most famous cannibal, Alferd Packer. A large dining facility in CU Boulder is named after his legend.
A colorful account of his trial for cannibalism had the judge saying this to Packer, “When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of ’em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t’ be hanged by th’ neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin’ ag’in reducin’ th’ Dimmycratic populayshun of this county.”
Feathers
@Mnemosyne: I love Tom Bihn. Several of my bags are old enough to have the tag in apologizing for Bush being an idiot and that they didn’t vote for him. will check the exact wording in the AM
Also one of my fave post election tweets went: “Does Donald Trump even know what food that hasn’t been spit in tastes like?”
NotMax
@EJ
Dago?
Mamma mia.
Omnes Omnibus
@SWMBO: My parents were married at the time I was born.
EBT
@Petorado: I will never forget Cannibal: The Musical.
Adam L Silverman
@Petorado: Republicans – always taking everything to the extreme.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Saw a mention on LMM’s Twitter feed today.
I had to laugh at the comment by the dude who complained that Sony only bought this because of “Hamilton.” I guess he doesn’t follow movies very much.
Gogol’s Wife will be especially excited because she loves In the Heights and this has the same writer as well as the same composer.
Omnes Omnibus
@EBT: This thread has taken a rather dark turn.
EBT
@Omnes Omnibus: How about some good news? Tomorrow is 10 years of HRT so for my transiversery I took new photos.
Omnes Omnibus
@EBT: Congrats.
ETA: I am not against dark turns though.
LesGS
@EBT: Happy traniversary! I had my top surgery done on 8/15/00, and now celebrate August 15th as my Boythday. :-D
Omnes Omnibus
@LesGS: Napoleon’s birthday, fwiw.
LesGS
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, that and our height are about the only things we have in common.
EBT
@LesGS: Oh god Boythday, I love it. Also the day after my birthday! Not my original birthday obviously but one of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Knock on wood right now. Now!
LesGS
@efgoldman: I assure you that I am currently taller than your granddaughter.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Anniversary of George Washington’s death, which because he was still on the rolls as the highest ranking officer in the US Army left some guy named Alexander Hamilton, Major General, as the senior ranking officer in the US at the time.
scott alloway
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you. I needed that laugh.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I still posit that Boney’s birth was the more momentous event. No Boney, no modern Europe. For better or worse.
Omnes Omnibus
@scott alloway: You have a weird sense of humor. Many do not find my jokes funny. Assholes.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: No argument here. Was just contributing to the “on this date” trivia being tossed around.
Belafon
I think it’s good that this gets reported on as long as the story contains a statement to the effect that no president, or even normal adult, would act the way Trump does. I think we should start saying “There he goes again.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Tracking.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Didn’t know you were joking with that picture. OK the numbers a bit high side but other than that……
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
The last letter Washington ever wrote was written to Hamilton.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Trumpies couldn’t stay at attention that long.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
My novel (and, I think, Miss Bianca’s) takes place during the Napoleonic Era, aka the Regency Era in England. It’s a wildly popular time period for novels since it sits right at that social transition from aristocrat-dominated agriculture to the Industrial Revolution.
seaboogie
I am always appreciative of Graydon Carter’s tweaking of Trump since the early days, but what is it with the ego-maniacal celebrity whores from NYC with orange skin and weird hairdos?
Hope the link worked. Willing to give Carter a pass on the ‘do for coining “short-fingered vulgarian”, tho.
Miss Bianca
@efgoldman: Here in the central mountains of Colorado, the wind is howling non-stop, as it often does. But a fire in the woodstove and an episode of “Firefly” covers for it nicely.
Keith P.
That Don Jr. combo looks awful. I like to consider myself a connoisseur of fine dining, and I see about 5 different things wrong with that plate.
1. Someone did a shit job of trimming the steak.
2. A small pile of steamed broccoli florets? Seriously?
3. Seated on a bed of mashed potatoes
4. Outdated plate composition
5. Uneven plate composition (looks like a waiter carried it along with about 5 other plates balanced on an arm)
The bit about the the Sichuan dumplings being topped with soy and truffle oil also gave me a chuckle. I actually like truffle oil (does a decent job of scenting a meal), but it’s a cheap flourish that has no business being mixed with Asian, indicating someone came along and said “Trump this up a bit…add truffle oil!”. A real lux restaurant shaves fresh truffles over it.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Actually, I’m starting in the 1780s, just prior to the French Revolution, but…point holds.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Bear in mind that that some of the “leftiest ” people of that era, Charles Fox and Charles Grey (after whom Earl Grey tea was named), were terribly grand.
ETA: Grand in the old sense. Landed. Posh. Rich, but for gambling debts. You’ve seen The Dutchess, yes?
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Why, yes, I do have a t-shirt from The Ripped Bodice. I haven’t had a chance to wear it yet, though.
I can go back into my whole spiel about how drastically fashion changed between 1780 and 1800, but that may wait until my period dress arrives from Etsy.
Davebo
@efgoldman:
Old people flirting is cute! Can’t wait to turn sixty. (a mere 8 years away)
GregB
@Matt McIrvin:
There was a photo essay somewhere about the big Wey Liu in Saugus that git put to the wrecking ball.
I think the big orange dinosaur got sold off this year too.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I have not seen The Duchess, but I read the book it was based on long before the movie came out. Georgiana was very much in the vanguard of the fashion to try and be “closer to nature” à la Rousseau, including by breastfeeding her own children, which horrified her mother and mother-in-law as being unworthy of a duchess.
Captain C
@Mnemosyne: Spittle is optimistic.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
Ironically, for all the shit she got for it at the time, Marie Antoinette was another person who helped move along the switch from stiff brocades to wispy muslins. The whole point of Petit Trianon was another Rousseau-ian experiment in simplicity and getting back to nature. Though now I’m blanking on when “Emile” was published, or even if that’s the right title. His big bestseller.
InternetDragons
Since it’s an open thread, I wanted to share a guide I just ran across: “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda – former Congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen”.
It’s based on the collective experiences of former progressive Congressional staffers who served during the heyday of the Tea Party. Their premise is that they watched how the Tea Party managed to succeed in being obstructive toward President Obama, and now assert that “…if a small minority in the Tea Party can stop President Barack Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump”.
This is a long read, but full of practical wisdom and strategies. Since the election, I struggle against caving in to hopelessness and despair – and work like this guide shores up my faith that we can effectively fight back. Here’s the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DzOz3Y6D8g_MNXHNMJYAz1b41_cn535aU5UsN7Lj8X8/preview#
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Her husband was a patron of Fox. Grey was her lover. Grey, as PM, presided over the Reform Act and the abolition of slavery. Grand Whigs tended to support the cause of the Colonies (not necessarily independence, but a greater voice). They were interesting people.
Davebo
@efgoldman:
Obviously struck a nerve. Nerves are [email protected]efgoldman:
Omnes Omnibus
@Davebo: Some of us saw the comment before you added stuff about your age.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: I love the Regency era. Are you having fun studying it for your novel?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think they also addressed it in the movie, but it was kind of a big deal that Georgiana got involved in electoral politics. There were huge social taboos about women speaking in public and she helped start breaking those down, at a pretty high cost to herself.
And they were all ruinous gamblers. She was constantly in debt and terrified that her husband would find out.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
Fun but occasionally frustrating since my hero is an American and it’s a pain to research the parallel time period in America. At best, most social histories skip directly from the American Revolution to Jackson’s election. It’s definitely a whole lot easier to find contemporary sources than it was in the pre-Internet days.
ETA: I’ve joined up with a group that does country dances from the time period, so that’s been a lot of fun. Waiting for my dress to arrive for the Jane Austen Tea dance in January!
Viva BrisVegas
@InternetDragons:
The trouble is that liberals generally lack the obsessive, insistent self delusions of conservatives.
They keep making the mistake of being reasonable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Yep and yep. Anyway, my goal was to point you at Fox and Grey, if you were not aware of them.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, there’s much more available for European history of that time.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
It’s a bitch just wanting to get along with people, much easier to just hate them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: You may want to aim at the history the state you are using. Or pick a model and seek that guy’s pension history narrative and then adapt it?
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
One of the things “her” subjects held against her, IIRC. French industry had a lock on producing those high-end brocades (and on fashion in general). The new-fangled “Indian muslins” were British — the British Empire was encouraging cotton plantations in their subcontinental property, and flimsy cotton fabrics like muslin & calico (named after Calcutta) were heavily marketed as a fashion choice that was both “exotic” and “Not French”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: She was the Queen of France. Why do you put ” ” around her?
ETA: How many foreign designers did Mrs. Obama wear?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I picked Philadelphia in large part because that’s where a lot of French refugees from the Terror ended up, and his mother is French for plot purposes. I also wanted a city that leaned more towards abolitionism, again for plot reasons, but because Philadelphia has such a strong history with the Revolution and early government, I think I’ve compounded my history donut hole problem. But I’m mostly just trying to get a decent idea of the social differences between a middle or working-class Philadelphian and an English aristocrat, and it’s surprisingly hard to tease out. I suspect that it’s partly that Americans at the time (and still) felt pretty defensive about the English and minimized the social differences as much as they could when they wrote about themselves.
ETA: Also, of course, that we mostly have written records from the upper class of America, especially in that time period, not the middle class.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Marie was called “the Austrian bitch” by her subjects. They never really accepted her as their queen, which is one of the reasons she lost her head.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
Yes and no — the fashion change was happening regardless of what the cloth manufacturers of France wanted. There were too many other cultural influences in its favor. They may call it Empire Style in France, but the dresses are pretty much identical to Regency fashions in England and Federal Style in America, barring a few regional flourishes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: It is too late at night for me to argue about the French Revolution.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Is it a key plot point to understand those differences? Or could you focus on other things?
Yarrow
@Omnes Omnibus: The French Revolution be worth a thread here. We could take notes in preparation for what’s coming.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Antonia Fraser biography of Marie Antoinette is fab. It’s sympathetic without making excuses for her mistakes.
@Yarrow:
It’s key, because the hero unexpectedly inherits an aristocratic title and moves to England. I may just need to make a few lists for myself from the sources I have (including Frances Trollope’s hilariously snarky Domestic Manners of the Americans) and then wing it from there and hope I don’t make any obvious errors.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Hmmm….yeah I can see where that would be important. A list or even spreadsheet to compare various aspects might be useful. At some point you’ll probably just have to take a leap and move forward even if you don’t have all the background info you wish you had. A slight bit of artistic license is probably allowable, although I understand with historical fiction it’s important to get the historical part as accurate as possible.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
It’s a romance novel, so it’s slightly less important to be totally accurate. ? But most Regency readers are very well-versed in the period, so I have to try not to make any boneheaded mistakes.
And with that, I’m off to sleep. Goodnight, all!
Cckids
@Botsplainer:
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@EBT: Congrats!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@efgoldman: Odd, the one next to me is terrific, for steak. It certainly is light years above the meal the reviewer had.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@chopper: Yes, Trump will be standing, feet heroically appart gazing south to say no the Mexican Rapist menace while in his right hand he is tweeting while his left reached for the butt of some unseen woman. The base of the statue will be supported by crowd of REAL (as in white) Americans gazing up at the man who saved them from the ravages of affordable health care while Snowden and Assage look on approvingly.
(you know, painting Trump as some kind later day Churchill is so ludicrous it might be the way to get the point threw to his supporters)
mjl
@efgoldman:
Drive by there almost daily: The giant cactus is still there standing (probably kept as a potential Landmark for would-be buyers?). It looks surreal now, standing there alone in front of a demolished lot. Perfect symbol for the incoming Trump era?
PS: “Fancy dinner in 1975” was probably the point of that place. Shame they never figured out how to monetize that post-Nixon atmosphere.
SFAW
@Davebo:
Keep annoying us old farts, it might turn out to be a loooooong 8 years.
Or very short.
SFAW
@mjl:
I ate at the Hilltop two or three or four times. Not sure I ever thought it was a fancy place, just seemed to be a standard type of steakhouse, with reasonably good meat, and good prices. I don’t think it ever pretended to be something it was not.